Local Search Engines File Complaint Against Google

The Korea Times carried an article with additional detail on the complaint filed against Google by local Korean search engines.  I recommend it for those of you interested in more in-depth analysis of this issue.

Google versus Naver in the Mobile Broadband Era

I read an interesting short article in Telecoms Korea today that confirmed my thinking.  To be specific, I thought that the introduction of the iPhone and Android-based phones in Korea would quickly begin to erode Naver's monopoly on web-based search here in Korea.  That appears to be what is happening.  According to the article "Although Naver is a leading search engine on the web, NHN has felt threatened from Google in conjunction with the expansion of Android-based smartphones in the local market. Google services, including mobile search, are offered by default on Android smartphones and the iPhone, and Google is gaining popularity with Korean mobile users and on the web."  Enough said. 

Naver Complains of Google Monopoly in Smartphones!

NHN, the provider of South Korea's popular Naver search service, is unhappy with the smart phone market, where it claims rival Google is squeezing other companies out of business.  Samsung Electronics Android phones set Google as the default search engine, while Apple's iPhones use the Safari browser in which Google shows up by default.  NHN CEO Kim Sang-hun said it is "virtually impossible" for competitors to enter the market as only Google is connected.  "Users must be able to choose which search engines to use."   For the full story see today's Chosun Ilbo English edition.

I have commented extensively on Google's lack of success in the Korean market in earlier posts.  Naver does not really search the internet, but rather provides social information of value to Koreans, in the Korean language, and within what is essentially a Korean intra-net within the much, much larger internet.  I still stand by my earlier  arguments, but would only add that Google's services go well beyond search.   Google Earth (which is not available on the iPhone in Korea--why?), Google maps, Google Books and an array of other content and services are attractive to smart-phone users.  Over the past two and a half years, while Naver was building up its business within the Korean-language intranet with its Korean-language only service, Google was investing significantly in location-based services, and other services relating to books, scholarly documents, cloud-based applications, to name just a few.

Google's Search Market Share and "Walled Gardens"

A comment on my previous post asked why I included the Czech Republic, along with China, Russia and South Korea, as "walled gardens." A good question.

I based the reference largely upon a September 16, 2008 article in The Financial Times, entitled "Google still struggling to conquer outposts," which included a non-Google map of the world as an interactive graphic. The article used Szenam, Baidu, Yandex, Naver and Yahoo in Japan as "local success stories." What they all have in common, according to the article, is that they (1) invested earlier and developed technologies that work with (2) the local languages.

The term "walled garden" may not be the best to describe what is happening in all of these countries. For example, China is undoubtedly the most aggressive of these countries in governmental efforts to filter, censor and control the internet. However, in the case of Korea, I believe that the overwhelming preference for Korean language, together with the fact that Naver does not really search the internet, as Google's bots do, effectively walls off most consumers here from using most of the content and applications that are out there on the web. With the arrival of the iPhone tomorrow and Android phones soon to follow, that situation may be about to change.